Who suffered the most from the Wizarding Wars?
by Nyra Lily Potter
Summary: After the wars with Voldemort there was a popular question that people kept asking themselves. Who suffered the most from the Wizarding Wars? This is one woman's answer.


**Hey Everyone! This idea came to me when I was thinking about the Wizarding Wars with Voldemort and I asked myself a question, 'Who suffered the most from the Wizarding Wars?'. I came up with many answers to this before this idea hit me. I thought about it for a bit and ended up writing this. So enjoy and remember to review, even tell me _your _answer if you wish.**

**On with the show!**

**Disclaimer: I have known my name for quite some years now and it is most definitely not J.K Rowling. Therefore I do not, sadly, own Harry Potter. **

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After the First and Second Wizarding Wars there was a popular question going around. One that had many answers.

_Who suffered the most?_

Some people say the muggles and Muggleborns that were killed off in the thousands. Some say the children of Hogwarts who had their education interrupted and left school only to die. Some say Harry Potter or Neville Longbottom, both possible children of the prophecy and who both grew up without their parents.

Whatever answer they come up with, I disagree.

They all say that Lord Voldemort was a Monster who couldn't have been a child, a teenager, a human. To them he just appeared. He had no relations, no family. No brother, no sister, no father.

No mother.

I am often overlooked. My name is Merope Gaunt. I have been dead for some seventy-odd years. I died so that my baby boy may live, such as Lily Potter did except she had fifteen months with her son and went down facing a madman.

I still feel so very guilty about that.

I had an hour with my son before I gave in. I didn't mean to. How was I to know that if I closed my eyes to blink, they'd never open?

So I had to watch my boy from afar, see him bullied at the orphanage, smile when he got his Hogwarts letter. When he became a prefect and then Head Boy I was so proud. His... experiences... with the dark arts left me unsettled. When he got a job at Borgin and Burkes, I was relieved. Maybe he just wanted to take over once the old men who owned the store died or retired.

When Tom killed the Riddle Family, it scared me. I must admit that I understood and had I not been so meek and _dead_ I would've done the same thing. Tom Riddle Senior had seemed like an honourable man, surely he wouldn't leave a pregnant woman who was his wife behind? I was wrong. I hoped that the Riddle murder was a once-off.

Hepzibah Smith's death proved it wasn't. I began to see my boy was becoming something sinister. When he disappeared for awhile I still watched him. What I saw terrified me.

How could I think that a child born of a love potion, who had no parents to guide him, who grew up with no love would be able to show kindness, compassion?

When he was still Tom, I was able to comfort myself with the fact that if he killed, he had to be careful. Too many murders surrounding him would have become suspicious.

So when he created a new persona for himself I was fearful. He proved he had no problem killing in the open. I could do nothing but watch as my son tore his soul into pieces, murder by murder, feeling the guilt for each one, feeling the pain of whoever he tortured.

I am an outcast here. Wherever 'here' is anyway, because it definitely is not heaven. People avoid me like the plague when they discover who I am the mother of. I don't blame them.

For all the pain I went through because of Tom's actions, it will never compare to the agony I felt when he died. For all he had done, I still loved him. A mother's bond is unbreakable, and there is nothing like it. A mother will never stop loving her child.

So when seventeen year old Harry Potter killed my precious Tom, I hated him. In that single moment I felt an undulating fury so strong, unlike any emotion I had ever felt before. That Potter brat lived while my son died. I know in the back of my mind that if anyone deserved to live it was Harry Potter and not my Tom, but I couldn't help it. He is my son.

I am often overlooked. My name is Merope Gaunt and I have been dead for some seventy-odd years. Many people ask, "Who suffered the most from the Wizarding Wars?" My answer is me.

I am Merope Gaunt, descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself.

I am the mother of Lord Voldemort.


End file.
